“Why ask me to do it?” That worried me most. “Why not hire out the work? Or twist a bargain for it?”
“Your participation anchored my curse in your city, in your world, by your own hand.”
A bitter taste flooded my mouth, but I couldn’t reward her by showing how deep her words cut me.
“I am a creature of Faerie. I carried these children in my womb. They are mine and belong to my world.”
Before she reached the punchline, the remaining puzzle pieces snicked into place, and I experienced an epiphany.
“You can enter the archive because you’re of Faerie.” I laughed softly. “You just can’t exit it.”
With only witchborn fae entering and exiting the archive, I was willing to bet Remy had gotten it wrong. I figured anyone—or anything—could enter. Getting out again? That was the sticking point.
This was it. This was finally it. The truth. The real reason why she needed the hearts.
“They keyed the archive to witchborn fae, didn’t they?” I whistled through my teeth. “Makes you wonder if they didn’t lure you in here to add to their collection, doesn’t it? They had to know you couldn’t get out once you got in.”
Though her expression remained the same, crimson filled Natisha’s eyes, and I could tell I had gotten her thinking.
“This is all very Snow White.” Well, Evil Queen. “What are you going to do?” I laughed. “Eat the hearts?”
“Yes.” She stared at me blankly. “What else would I do with them?”
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer, I guess.
Why lug them around in a backpack when you can carry them in your stomach?
“Why target my city?” I lost feeling where my fingers wrapped the swords’ hilts. “It’s a great city, don’t get me wrong, but is it worth all this?”
“Atlanta is not yours,” Natisha snarled. “You are merely the latest in a long line of necromancers with the hubris to assume you can control the land and its people. You are not the law. I do not recognize your authority.”
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with your ex, would it?” I made a thoughtful sound. “He ditched you, and now you’re going to destroy his home and his family? The one he made without you?”
“Those girls were mine.” Magic sparkled in her hair. “They were my life, my heart, and he stole them.”
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “I was told you ditched your kids for Faerie.”
Vicious laughter rose up the back of her throat, and yeah. That did not sound good for us.
“I offered myself to Archimedes as his mate. I was willing to lessen myself for him, a mere warg, and he banished me.”
“How did a simple warg banish a gwyllgi healer of immense power?”
“He climbed in bed with the witchborn fae first.” Crimson magic shimmered across her skin. “He used their dual natures, their unnatural powers, to bind me to Faerie until my children had forgotten me.”
A binding of that magnitude would have cost him, a lot. I couldn’t imagine the sticker price on it.
“He used me as his broodmare, bridling me with sweet words of love.” A growl entered her voice. “What he wanted wasn’t my heart, but a powerful bloodline he could build by exploiting the girls’ natures.” Her upper lip quivered. “Now I will get what I want.”
“You’re the reason the gwyllgi, and shifters in general, were targeted by the coven.”
“The streets of Atlanta will run red with the blood of Archimedes’s offspring.” Her teeth shone in a brilliant smile. “Then, and only then, will I know peace.”
“They’re your descendants too. You get that, right? What happens after you’ve murdered all your great-great-great-whatever-grandkids? You hand the city over to the coven? Was that the payment they required?”
“Our bargain is none of your concern.” The gleeful malice in her eyes all but confirmed the charges. “The abominations I helped to create will get what they deserve.”
“We aren’t so easy to kill,” Midas growled, his own teeth bright and sharp.
Laughter cut its way free of her throat, jagged and bitter. “I will slay you all without lifting a hand.”
“A bloodline curse.” Ambrose crackled with power. “The only survivor will be you, their matriarch.”
Six witches, even six faeborn witches, were less than half the strength of a full coven of thirteen. Natisha was ancient, and she was pissed, and she had a direct route to all her targets through their lineage. She wouldn’t have to hunt them down. A curse on her own bloodline would identify and kill them for her.
Six wasn’t a bad substitute, when you looked at it that way.
“You’re all hot and bothered over how Archimedes used you and your daughters, but what are you doing? The same exact thing, that’s what. On a far more epic scale than he ever dreamed. What kind of mother does that make you?”
“Better than the woman who bore you. I have not lied to my children, ever. I have made my stance plain, and my daughters understand their roles.”
Raise kids to believe what their parents taught was normal, and of course they would be okay with it. They had no perspective to see their own mother had honed them into weapons she would wield and then discard when she was done.
“You wouldn’t have to try very hard to outclass my mom, but good on you for attempting smack talk. It’s not a fae strong suit, so I applaud your efforts. Also?” I ground my molars together. “How does everyone and their momma know about my mother?”
Family secrets were supposed to be, you know, secret.
“Liz interrogated her,” Midas ventured. “She must have shared the intel with…”
A growl rumbled through the air, deep and rich and vibrating the ground beneath our feet.
One second, Midas stood beside me.
The next, he was gone.
And I was spitting dirt out of my mouth.
“What the…?” I shoved upright in the next best thing to slow motion. “Midas?”
“Come on.” Ambrose hauled me to my feet. “Move.”
The rumble grew closer, and shale bounced in rhythmic bursts as if…
“Oh frak.” I swung my head toward where Midas had been. “I was afraid of that.”
The growl was not a growl, but the earth itself trembling and protesting the weight of the towering creature who held my mate in its fist as it strode toward me with booming footsteps. Not its, but hers. I was no expert on giants, or giantesses, but I couldn’t pin another name on her.
Tipping my head back, I stared up and up and up at her. “How did that sneak up on us?”
Huge but proportionate, she was a craggy-faced woman of middle age, riddled with battle scars. She wore thick leather armor and carried gargantuan weapons strapped to her massive back. The silver braids of coarse hair that hung over her shoulders were longer than I was tall.
“That didn’t,” Ambrose answered. “The witchborn fae waited to change skins until she held the advantage.”
Without a word, the giantess tossed the backpack of hearts onto the ground at Natisha’s feet.
Remy.
Goddess, I should have thought of her first. I prayed my friend had survived their encounter.